SAME PIG, DIFFERENT LIPSTICK

President Barack Obama evidently thinks he can solve his political problems by changing the lipstick on the pig.

In his State of the Union speech last night (1/27), the president indicated he intends to press forward with the agenda voters in Massachusetts found so objectionable they sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate for the first time in 38 years.

A CNN poll released Tuesday (1/26) indicated only 30 percent of Americans want Obamacare passed in anything approaching its present form.  But in his SOTU, the president urged Congress: "Do not walk away from reform.  Not now.  Not when we are so close."

A CNN poll released Monday (1/25) indicated nearly 75 percent of Americans think at least half the money in the "stimulus" bill passed in February — which the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday will cost $862 billion — has been wasted.

In a Rasmussen poll in December, 56 percent of respondents opposed a second stimulus bill (only 33 percent supported the idea).  But in the SOTU, Mr. Obama urged the Senate to pass a $154 billion second stimulus bill the House passed last month.

Same pig, just different lipstick.  It was a scaled down redo of what they’d passed in February, as California Democrat Rep. Brad Sherman revealed when he told constituents in a "telephone town hall" Jan. 25 that "we’ve been told not to call it a stimulus bill, but a jobs bill."

In a Pew poll released Jan 21, global warming ranked last among 20 issues of concern to Americans.  When the House passed last summer a bill to tax companies which emit carbon dioxide (Cap & Trade), a Rasmussen poll indicated 35 percent of respondents favored it, but 40 percent were opposed.  Other polls indicate support for Cap & Trade only if it doesn’t cost jobs or significantly increase the price of electricity. 

It does both, and dramatically.  The Obama administration estimated the Cap & Trade bill would cost the typical household up to an additional $1,761 per year.

In the SOTU, Mr. Obama, citing what he said was "the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change," called on the Senate to pass the Cap & Trade  bill.

Concern about global warming has plummeted since it was disclosed that much of the evidence for global warming may have been fabricated.  This has caused a problem for supporters of Cap & Trade  legislation in the Senate.

But nothing, said Sen. John Kerry, that can’t be fixed by changing the color of the lipstick.

"We have not changed our goals one bit," Sen. Kerry said in an email to reporters yesterday. "We’re talking about setting a target for the reduction of pollution, which is why we don’t call it Cap & Trade anymore."

There were some rhetorical gestures in the direction of moderation.  After proposing tens of billions of dollars in new federal spending, Mr. Obama said he wanted to freeze discretionary federal spending (1/7th of the budget).  He didn’t mention he’d increased that spending 20 percent over what it had been in the last year of the Bush administration, and seemed annoyed when the audience tittered when he said the freeze wouldn’t go into effect until the next fiscal year. 

But overall, those — mostly Democrats who are scared out of their wits — who were hoping the president would tack toward the center were disappointed.  Mr. Obama made it clear he’ll continue to pursue the most left-wing agenda in our history.

The speech itself was odd.  Mr. Obama spoke as if someone else had been president for the last year, as if some political party other than his own has a 40 seat majority in the House, a 19 seat majority in the Senate.  It was a nakedly partisan speech, far more appropriate for a candidate for president than for a president. 

Doesn’t Mr. Obama care what Americans think?  Or has he no clue?

In his interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer Monday, he said the problem wasn’t that his policies were bad, but that he hadn’t explained them well enough.  This from a guy who, according to CBS, made 411 speeches, press conferences and "public availabilities" in 2009.  And people in Massachusetts voted for Scott Brown, he said, because they were still mad at George Bush. 

Even when he says nutty things like that, President Obama would rather be judged on his words than on his deeds.  But people care more about what a president does than what he says — no matter how much lipstick is slathered on the pig.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.